Recognizing the increase in contract attorney work,the use of contractors by major firms especially for document review, the need for better information for contractors and document reviewers, and the desire for improvements in the legal contracting field, this website was created by a contract attorney for other contract attorneys.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Happy 4th of July Weekend!

Anybody out there celebrate the 4th working? I actually did not. How about the Philly 4th Celebrations? I was out of town.

This weekend we celebrated our Independence from Tyrannical rule by a dictator located many miles away in England. Ironically many of us contractors are subject to the tyrannical rule of the law firm running our projects, but are not on site. We could easily overthrow our overseers with physical violence, but that would be the end of the project. they would deal with the situation and write us off. So how can we regain a little control? Think about it. What do you want out of your job situation? Do you want to be a mindless robot spending innumerable hours staring at a computer screen in poor conditions for relatively small salaries for the rest of your lives?? Or would you like to have your opportunity to move up the ladder? To have a say about your conditions? To increase your pay scale? To get better benefits?

Anyway, this post I have a couple of news tidbits.

First, I have heard that McCarter has officially closed the doors of its large Newark, New Jersey Document review site. The reason being not enough work (though some have reported that it was because the coders up there were so piss poor). There have been rumors that both Vlad and David King are returning to Philly, but this is unconfirmed.

Second, we for got to celebrate the FLSA's birthday it was June 25, 1938. It was meant to create standard wage practices, primarily for non-management hourly workers. It essentially mandated that anyone working more than 40 hours per week get lunch breaks and pay for overtime. Read it sometime it is worth it.

Third, the Temp Attorney website has a good benefits story that everyone should read. It is at:

FINALLY, I would like to close with an issue that has been bugging me as of late. On the large jobs that I have worked here in Philadelphia lately, I have noticed something. There is a lot of the attitude that Philly contractors are better than New York contractors, and that they cost less. Many of the contractors that forward this opinion, tend to go on to say that the large firms see this and will choose Philly over New York for future large jobs. I do not think this is true at all, especially in light of how Philly was before the Pharmaceutical Products Liability cases brought massive Doc Review to Philly. So, I wanted to get your opinions on this. Are Philly Contractors better then NYC? Will Philly take work from NYC? Is taking pride in our fair city's contractors worth any effort? Does it really matter?

I welcome your comments as always on any of the above issues or articles. Also feel free to post about issues you would like more about, or in the alternative, send me an e-mail, I will do what I can to address anything you bring up.

8 comments:

Better than NYC's? Hard to say. I'm going to say that its probably a wash.

Less expensive? Probably. Office space is cheaper in Philadelphia, and wages are also lower. The people at the Philly McCarter office were being paid less than the Newark people.

Will Philadelphia "steal" work from New York? I have no idea. I think that Pharma litigation will likely stay in Philadelphia. The document review centers at places like Pepper Hamilton are already up and running, and there would be no point in replacing them with other facilities unless the cost is substantially lower.

Is this a joke? Are you really serious? Are Philly contractors better than NYC?? Come on...it's not even real attorney work!! It requires absolutely NO legal expertise, training or education!! It's only a matter of time before someone figures out that they can contract your jobs out to paralegals or law students for $15/hour...or ship them to India for even cheaper!! Seriously? Are Philly workers better than NYC?! What the hell is the criteria?? OK, let me be perfectly honest with you...if you are doing doc review for any other reason than the following: (1) gap-filling while seeking real law job, (2) a retirement job, or (3)seeking to transition to a new career, than you really need to start thinking about your future...cause it ain't lookin' too good!

Actually, if you weren't involved in the McCarter project, you would think that comment #2 is pretty on the ball. I mean how much can one person screw up?

But alas, I did in fact QC bunches of stuff from Newark. And guess what? There were ridiculous mistakes. I mean totally ridiculous. Two that come to mind:

1. For a long stretch during the project, we were flipping through one page docs. So that would be easy. But then, they threw us a curve and dumped in some that were two-pagers in the midst of batches full of one-pagers. So what did the Newark guys do? They totally missed the second page on a lot of the docs. Understandable, I guess. But still.

2. Let's say there are two fields in a doc. We'll call them "Movie Title" and "Movie Time." Let's say we black out the movie time, but leave in the movie title. So it's relatively straightforward. Black out the time field, leave the title. But then let's say a reporter made a writing error and wrote in the time in the title box. You would think the attorney would catch that and black out the title box as well, right? (since it's got "time" information). But no, apparently, that kind of stuff slips through.

So yea, there were plenty others. Not to be ragging on Newark/NYC people. It's just they weren't paying attention as closely. Or maybe they were just rushed and timed to do a certain amount of batches per day or whatever. Whatever the reason, there was some really sloppy work up in Newark.

hey Pat, you loser who will never ever get a real law job...tell me how my ass tastes too! you are a worthless pudge ball who mistakenly thinks that his job matters. guess what fatty...you are a temp just like everyone else. loser. while your busy polishing Brian's sack, why don't you start looking for that next paycheck buddy.

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About Me

I am a contract attorney. I have been on a contract job or two in my career prior to this one, and I have also worked at small firms. I have many friends who have worked in firms of all sizes, and several who are contractors currently. I have learned through both personal experience, and through seeing what has happened to others in the industry. I know what it is like, and I want to change it.